In 2016, Shropshire Kids Fest took over the Quarry Park in Shrewsbury for its first year (see review here). This year, we were invited back with the promise that things were bigger and better for the second year, and we weren’t disappointed!
Shropshire Kids Fest is aimed at children of all ages but charged for those age 2 and above. This seems fair enough as our now 2 year olds gained far more from the festival this year than last year…
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Mindful that there would be some things the same, and some different, we divided up a little more this time round with one parent taking the older pair, another the younger and the third parent hovering between the two! If you have children of different ages (there are 5 years between my two!) you probably need to employ a similar approach in order to get the best out of the day…
The Festival takes over a large proportion of the park and a map is provided to help you navigate the activities. However, even though we had a plan before we arrived, we still found the best way was to let the children be in charge as there are so many things to do that planning ahead is a little tricky!
We started off in the section for younger children this time; there were lots of familiar names on offer with the Pyjama Drama and Baby Sensory franchises offering sessions as well as a ‘pop up’ soft play area and play bus. The little ones were really happy to explore here and it took the impatience of the older ones to move them on – each time they entered a tent they settled in as if they would stay there all day!
We persuaded the toddlers to move down the hill, navigating the excitement of the Police Car and those dressed up as familiar children’s characters and settled at the bottom of the hill by the circus tent. Here, Panic Circus was in residence and offered shows throughout the day as well as a variety of hands on practical activities – our older ones were pretty determined to try and master the unicycle! This was a great solution for us as Kate’s Kids Nursery had a crèche set up opposite the circus tent. Here, you could leave your little ones for up to an hr. Although we didn’t leave the toddlers, we did take it in turns to keep watch (although they were so busy and happy with the staff and activities on offer we really could have left them!) while the older ones felt a sense of independence while we watched them from a distance. As there were three adults (myself, hubbie and a friend!) we were also able to rotate around a little, meaning one of us was able to do a coffee run / explore the food stalls a little…
This year, we booked the older two on to a Bush Craft session. Again, this was something you could leave the children to do. The children were totally engrossed for an hour as the excellent staff engaged them in making bows and arrows, lighting their own fire (a real highlight!) and toasting marshmallows…this was a really well run session and allowed us to take the two little ones off for a nap…
There was so much more on offer this year, including a rather exciting Zip Wire as well as the old favourites such as the amazingly long water slide. As we were only able to make one day this year, we did steer our kids towards the activities which had less of a queue and this actually meant we did different things to last year, which was great…
The Kids Festival is already in our diaries for next year and we are anticipating the event will improve year on year. Next year though, we will try and resort back to the original plan of being there for two days; getting there early on the second day to do all the bigger activities before it gets busy. Again, a great day out and at £8 for a child and £2 for an adult, certainly value for money for our lot who went home shattered – always a winner!
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Rachel lives in Telford in Shropshire and is Mum to her little girl aged 7 and little boy aged 2.